NATO keen to continue political dialogue with Azerbaijan

15 November 2016 10:23 (UTC+04:00)

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By Laman Ismayilova

NATO is looking forward to continue the political dialogue with Azerbaijan during 2017, the Alliance’s press office in Brussels told Trend.

"The Allies met on November 5 to discuss the implementation of the Individual Partnership Action Plan over the past year," said the NATO press office, adding that the new NATO-Azerbaijan Individual Partnership Action Plan still needs to be developed.

Azerbaijan's cooperation with NATO is carried out in the framework of the Partnership for Peace program. Earlier, NATO has approved the document of the fourth stage for the Individual action plan within the partnership for 2015-2016. Meetings on review of the partnership’s objectives implementation are carried out together with the International NATO headquarters in Baku and Brussels within this plan and the Planning and Review Process (PARP).

A total of 27 from 41 objectives, adopted by Azerbaijan within PARP, refer to the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. A part of the accepted objectives is already completed, while the work on implementation of other long-term tasks continues.

The NATO press service reported that it will build on the existing partnership activities we have.

"These include a dialogue on a broad range of defense, security and good governance issues, as well cooperation in the areas of defense reform, support to enhancing interoperability and defense education reform."

Touching upon the bilateral cooperation in Afghanistan, the press office added that NATO highly appreciates Azerbaijan’s commitment to continuing support for NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan.

The NATO press service also said that no high-level visits have been scheduled at the moment.

Azerbaijan cooperates with NATO in Afghanistan -- the peacekeeping contingent of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has been serving there since November 20, 2002.

As of April 2016, the Azerbaijani peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan includes 90 servicemen, two medical officers and two sappers.